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It looks like we got us a scholar here boys: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=XlSBdGkAAAAJ&hl=en
How can we expect to compete with that?
Progressive Disenchantment Atonement
- Thread starter MWinther
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How can we expect to compete with that?
Ah! The source of his copy/paste jobs!It looks like we got us a scholar here boys: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=XlSBdGkAAAAJ&hl=en
How can we expect to compete with that?
I read the article “Turtles all the way down” : The Unity of the Trinity as Eternal Regress in the Godhead".It looks like we got us a scholar here boys: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=XlSBdGkAAAAJ&hl=en
How can we expect to compete with that?
I wanted to read something he's written to get a feel for what sort of thinker he is, or whether he is one at all. I chose this one because it's a relatively recent writing and because I deal with the issues of infinite regress and plurality in God in the book I'm writing so I thought there might accidentally be some material I could glean from the article.
In short, the article tries to answer the question: How can Father, Son, and Spirit be three distinct persons without creating a “fourth” thing that unites them?
His answer is basically that unity doesn’t come from a separate substance. It comes from relationships. The paper argues that the Trinity’s unity is best explained as an infinite relational process rather than a shared substance or a separate “fourth thing.” In plain terms, God is one because the three persons are eternally relating in love, not because they share some extra underlying essence.
That answer, so far as it goes, isn't false, but his paper is unconvincing because he doesn't ever make an actual argument. He claims basically that, "infinite regress solves unity" but making the claim is pretty much all he does. He argues that relations require further relations and that, instead of being a problem, that infinite chain constitutes unity. The problem is that he never proves, or even tries to prove why an infinite regress should produce unity rather than instability, why that regress is metaphysically real rather than conceptual or why this applies to persons rather than abstract relations. He makes analogies like quarks forming a proton and sets that contain themselves but these analogies don't prove anything.
To be clear, I'm not suggesting that the articles is a total waste. He correctly identifies the “problem of the fourth” as a real philosophical tension and he avoids crude models that collapse into contradiction. Also, as I said, the relational ontology he proposes isn't false. It is definitely a serious direction and so the article isn't nonsense, it just isn't fully worked out.
An improvement would start by nailing down clear definitions for terms like unity, relation, being and person. From there he needs to establish why relations are required for unity, why relations necessarily generate a regress, why that regress is not destructive and why that regress constitutes unity rather than undermines it.
Instead, this article wants regress to be explanatory. Where the infinite regress actually grounds the thing in question. The problem is, you don’t get that just by saying it. Appealing to F. H. Bradley, who tried to “tame” the regress, doesn’t magically turn it into an explanation. At best, it merely reframes the problem. In other words, some philosophers argue that certain structures are not built step-by-step, not explained from outside, but are given as a whole. So the regress is not “traveled,” it’s just “there all at once.” The problem for this paper is that, even if that works in abstract logic (a point which I question and which the paper does not establish), it doesn’t automatically transfer to metaphysical reality, much less to personal beings.
Bottom line is that this article sounds like a solution because it uses sophisticated language but fails as an actual solution because it never explains the thing it claims to explain.
MWinther
Member
It seems you stopped reading halfway through the article. Bradley did in fact regard this regress as vicious. Gaskin, however, argues that it is harmless and even constitutive, because its regressive stages are not epistemically discrete moments that must be processed one after another by the understander, but are instead grasped all at once as a single epistemological package. If this is correct, then the unity‑of‑the‑Trinity problem is resolved.
It seems it is you who stops half way through reading things for I addressed that EXACT point in my post!
"Instead, this article wants regress to be explanatory. Where the infinite regress actually grounds the thing in question. The problem is, you don’t get that just by saying it. Appealing to F. H. Bradley, who tried to “tame” the regress, doesn’t magically turn it into an explanation. At best, it merely reframes the problem. In other words, some philosophers argue that certain structures are not built step-by-step, not explained from outside, but are given as a whole. So the regress is not “traveled,” it’s just “there all at once.” The problem for this paper is that, even if that works in abstract logic (a point which I question and which the paper does not establish), it doesn’t automatically transfer to metaphysical reality, much less to personal beings." - Post 163
In short, you reframe the issue and propose a solution. You then leave it to the reader to suppose the problem resolved by virtue of your having proposed it.
That isn't the way rational arguments work.
You say, “the stages are not processed one after another… but grasped all at once”
That is a claim about how the mind understands something, but the Trinity problem you are claiming to have resolved is about what actually exists.
Those are not the same thing!
Even if I can grasp an infinite structure “all at once,” that does not tell me that such a structure exists in reality, that it produces unity or that it grounds three persons as one being.
All you've accomplished is shifting the argument away from ontology to epistemology (i.e. from 'being' to 'understanding') which is a category error.
MWinther
Member
I state that I have presented a theory, and that it may be a hard pill for some to swallow. I do not claim to have solved the problem of Trinitarian unity. The article offers a theory, not a definitive proof (very few articles do). Your allegation that the article "fails" is therefore unfounded, especially since you have not disproven the theory. The article succeeds in what it sets out to do: to present a theoretical proposal, without any pompous claim to having resolved a notoriously difficult issue.
The triunity problem is a logical problem: how three can be one. If that logical tension is resolved, then the triunity problem, as a logical issue, is resolved. This does not amount to proving that the inner structure of the Godhead is in fact trinitarian; that belongs to the domain of Christian dogma. The paper simply offers a rejoinder to the familiar anti‑trinitarian claim that, as a matter of logic, three cannot be one.
That is a retreat.
First you said, “If this is correct, then the unity-of-the-Trinity problem is resolved.”
Now you say, “I do not claim to have solved the problem. I only presented a theory.”
Fine. Then Clete’s point stands. The article proposes a theory, but it does not establish that the theory actually explains Trinitarian unity.
Presenting a theory is not the same as successfully explaining the thing in question.
MWinther
Member
Yes, I stand by it. The sentence "If this is correct, then the unity‑of‑the‑Trinity problem is resolved" is not a boast; it is a conditional argument. I put forward a theory. If the theory stands, the problem collapses. That is how reasoning works.
To present a theory is not to claim omniscience. It is to say: Here is a coherent model; if you accept its premises, the conclusion follows. Anyone who reads that as a triumphalist claim of having "solved" the Trinity is simply misreading the grammar. The conditional is doing real work. It marks the argument as provisional, exploratory, and open to critique, while still asserting that the theory has genuine explanatory power.
From the post you wrote immediately prior to having made this statement...
"If this is correct, then the unity‑of‑the‑Trinity problem is resolved."
You don't get to have it both ways.
At best!
The problem is that you present it not as a mere theory but as what you believe to be the case.
Perhaps more importantly, the logical errors it makes causes it to fail even as a theory.
Your "theory" makes a significant and undeniable category error!
Just what is it that you think it takes to falsify a theory?
As Joe Biden might say...
Come on, man!
You cannot resolves logic problems by making errors of logic.
Dogma, by definition, is not a logical issue. You seem to make category errors as a matter of course.
The fact is that three cannot be one. To state that three is one, without caveat or condition is to state a contradiction.
Acknowledgment of this fact is the first step in resolving the "logical problem".
That is, acknowledging that logic works and that you don't get to pretend otherwise, is the first step in resolving such an issue.
I'm out of time for today but, in very basic terms, the bible does not teach the simplistic and contradictory idea that God is Three in the same sense that He is One. The law of contradiction states that two contradictory claims cannot both be true in the same context (i.e. in the same sense and at the same time). Biblically, God is One in one sense and in another sense He is Three. The bible does not explain in any detail what the difference in this sense is, it simply informs us of the truth.
In short, the "logical problem" only exists in the minds of those who over simplify the teaching. Problem solved.
MWinther
Member
Your objection rests on a category mistake. You keep treating a theoretical proposal as though it were a dogmatic pronouncement. But a theory is evaluated by whether its internal logic holds, not by whether it settles every metaphysical question once and for all. Very few philosophical articles do that, and mine does not pretend to.
You also assert that the theory "fails" without actually engaging the theory's structure. You claim it commits a category error, but you never specify which category is being confused, nor where the confusion occurs. If you believe the regress I describe is vicious, then you must show why it is vicious, not merely assert it.
Likewise, your repeated insistence that "three cannot be one" is trivial unless you specify in what sense. No one claims that three persons are one person. The entire point of the logical problem is that unity and plurality are predicated in different respects. You yourself concede this when you say the Bible teaches God is one in one sense and three in another. Exactly so. The question is whether a coherent model can be given for that distinction. My article proposes one such model.
The slogan "three cannot be one" only follows if you assume a very narrow, quantitative notion of number, namely, that numbers are mere aggregates of identical units. That assumption is not self‑evident, and it is certainly not the only philosophical account of number.
Marie‑Louise von Franz, in Number and Time, argues that every whole number denotes a form of unity, not a pile of separable items. "Three" is not "three isolated things." It is a triadic whole, a structured unity whose very form is relational. In other words, "three" is already one, one triadic pattern.
This is not numerology; it is a metaphysical point about the qualitative nature of number. A number is not a heap but a Gestalt, a structural unity. Under this view, the anti‑trinitarian slogan "three cannot be one" simply collapses. It presupposes a reductive arithmetic model of number that no serious metaphysician is obliged to accept.
So when I say, "If this is correct, then the unity‑of‑the‑Trinity problem is resolved," I am making a conditional claim: If unity is structural rather than substantial, then a triadic unity is not a contradiction. That is not a boast; it is a straightforward entailment.
You are free to reject the theory. But rejecting it requires showing that the qualitative theory of number is incoherent, not merely repeating that "logic works." Logic works just fine; what is at issue is which ontology of number you are assuming. Von Franz's account shows that "three" can be a unity without collapsing into contradiction. That is precisely the point under dispute.
No I don't.
I specifically stated that your THEORY doesn't hold because THE THEORY makes a category error.
That's the last I'm responding to. All you're doing is accusing me of what I've demonstrated you're guilty of, which is classic reactionary transference that isn't worth my time.